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| Stephen Harper and North Vancouver's Ted White |
| 05.28.04 (1:54 am) [edit] |
|
Harper stated goal has been to lower Canadian taxes to such an extent that they lower than what they are in the US and according to Jack Granatstein increase military spending by 3 billion. At the same time, he promises to balance the budget. Under his “legislated taxpayer protection plan” he plans to make deficits illegal! I will let you figure out where that leaves Canada's social programs. This all seems to be part of the plan though. For Harper taxes cuts are a means of rolling back social programs. Indeed for 5 years Harper help head the National Citizens Coalition, three years as president and 2 years as VP. Founded in 1967 to fight public healthcare, the NCC raison d’ etat was succinctly put up in 1996 by then president David Somerville. “The fact of the matter is, we have stood since 1967 for more freedom through less government and we have promoted that philosophy in a number of different ways, through (public advocacy of) privatization, tax cuts, spending cuts and opposing gag laws. We’ve been consistent for almost 30 years.” If all this sounds familiar, it is because Americans for Tax Reform in the States is devoted to exactly the same end. Grover Norquist expressed the same idea in slightly different terms. He said that he wanted to so weaken the State by starving it of its life blood (i.e., tax revenue), that he could take it into a washroom and drown it in the bathtub. There is more. In a 1994 speech to the NCC, Harper addressed possibility of Quebec separation. “Whether Canada ends up as one national government or two national governments or several national governments, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion,” said Harper, who was at the time constitutional affairs critic for Reform. “What matters and should matter to politicians and people who believe in the kind of values that I believe the National Citizens’ Coalition share and the Reform Party share is not whether the Canadian state prospers, but whether the Canadian people and the land we call Canada prosper. “Whether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or 10 governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country may be.” In other words, for Harper cutting the government down to size is more important then that the country survives While I am at it, I might mention what a gem Conservative MP Ted White is and how puzzling it was that some people, in the lead up to the 1997 election did not like Kinsella digging up White's past. Why is this irksome? Kinsella pointed out that Ted White had a past relationship with Doug Christie. Doug Christie is not exactly a fine upstanding citizen and Kinsella was right to bring up that Ted White once belonged to the Western separatist party that Christie heads, viz., the Western Canada Concept. For those who do not know, Doug Christie is a Victoria lawyer who has made a name for himself by defending Canada’s most notorious Neo Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Among others, Christie has defended Ernst Zundel, Terry Long, former leader of the Aryan Nations of Canada and James Keegstra. It not that he defends these people; it is that he sympathizes with them. In 1985, Vancouver broadcaster Gary Bannerman said "Doug Christie has aligned himself so many times with these perverted monsters that he has to be viewed as one himself." Christie sued Bannerman for libel and lost. He appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, and lost again. Quotes like the following did not paint a pretty picture and the fact that he was frequently spotted with these guys at various meetings did not help either. "Spiritual revitalization (requires) the manifestation of a heroic role model for the European male. The leader is always the source of such a model. The leader must always epitomize the ideal of the nation." There is a whole lot more that should be pointed out about Ted White. His outrageous claim he made in the house March 31 of last year comes to mind. “"My riding has the largest Iranian population in the country. At least 40% of all the Iranians living there are refugee claimants. Most of them are bogus. I just mentioned the lawyer who sent me an e-mail last Wednesday or Thursday. He actually put in his email that people in the Iranian community had told him the guy was a criminal in Iran and he is a criminal in Canada and they wanted to know why we had let him in. I cannot say how many times that comment has been made to me by the decent Iranian immigrants in my riding who came in using the proper system. They see all these, and I am sorry to use the word, scumbags who come in using our refugee laws and claiming refugee status just so they can be criminals here.” Equally disturbing is that he one of two Alliance MPs that refused to condemn ex Alliance family issues critic Larry Spencer homophobic comments. Spencer said that homosexuality should be illegal and that there is a secret homosexual conspiracy to bring children into their ranks. Oh well, what can you expect from a candidate whose leader said back in 2001 that "west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not integrated into western Canadian society.” If there is positive thing about prospect of a government with both Harper and White in it, it is that they do not see eye to eye on various subjects. White’s big thing is direct democracy. White says that the way he votes depends upon what his constituents tell him. Harper on the other had rejects White’s approach out of hand. “This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion…” An interesting aside to White’s whole approach is that his polling methods he uses have been called into question. For example, Ted White's 1994 "Referendum 94" poll on the Young Offenders Act asked people to pay a phone toll to vote. Needless to say, such an approach does not yield reliable results, but then again consider the source. White once claimed that the “Research into such fields as [fine arts, classical studies, philosophy, anthropology, modern languages and literature, and medieval studies] as far as my constituents are concerned constitutes a personal past time and has no benefit to Canadian taxpayers.” 52% of people in his riding have some sort of University degree. |
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